TBDBITL gets ready to prove it in an Irish adventure

Depending on the traffic, even going across town from campus to Dublin, Ohio, can be a pain. So transporting the entire marching band to Dublin, Ireland, will require a true logistical feat.

TBDBITL is headed to the Emerald Isle this March. Over eight days and seven nights, the Buckeyes will march in Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Day parade and another in Celbridge, plus perform at Kilkenny Castle and in Cobh on the southern coast. The trip also will allow for some sightseeing, including excursions to Belfast to see the Titanic shipyard, Blarney Castle & Gardens to kiss the Blarney Stone, and the Cliffs of Moher, where Christopher Hoch ’00, ’00, ’02 MM, ’02 MA, ’12 PhD, the band’s director, says he had “the windiest day I’ve ever experienced in my life” on a trip last January to scout out the band’s visit.

This will be TBDBITL’s second trip abroad, following a 2015 appearance at an NFL game at Wembley Stadium outside London. But it’s the first coordinated by business operations manager Mary Machuga, who came on board in 2017.

Machuga says the band hired Prime Tours, which has coordinated similar tours for other marching bands, to guide TBDBITL through Ireland. They’ll charter a flight to avoid the chaos of splitting 248 students plus 15-20 staff members across a range of commercial flights. “We don’t have to worry about people making flights,” she says, “and it looks like we’ll be able to take all our equipment with us on the plane, so we won’t have to ship anything.”

That’s a relief, since the band lost a bass drum when shipping equipment separately for an event in New York in 2017, but it does require some extra work on Machuga’s part. She has to report the weights and measurements of all the equipment to the charter operator. When the band travels with the football team—say, to the Rose Bowl in California—the equipment is transported separately by truck, and the athletics department handles the logistics.

The return to international travel may present a few more hoops to jump through, but for Hoch, it’s long overdue.  “It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” he says.